Private
Collection
Collection
Marjorie Mort
(1906 - 1988)
Self Portrait, 1940
Private Collection
Marjorie Mort (1906 - 1988)
Size:
Height – 50.8cm
Width – 40.6cm
Literature: Llewellyn, Sacha, and Paul Liss. Portrait of an Artist. Liss Llewellyn, 2021, p.308.
Having trained in Manchester and London Mort moved to Cornwall in 1938 until the outbreak of War, when she went to Stockport to teach. This self-portrait, aged 34, is likely to have been under taken shortly before leaving Cornwall, and according to the address on the reverse was probably painted in her studio at The Willows, Cornwall Terrace, Penzance. She is also recorded as having lived before the war at Keigwin Place in Mousehole. After the war she returned to Cornwall and established, with Eric Hiller and Charles Breaker the Newlyn Holiday Sketching Group.
Painter born in Parson’s Green, London but relocated with her family to Derbyshire. Between 1924-31 Mort studied at Manchester School of Art before furthering her studies at the Slade School of Art in 1934. However her stay there was short-lived and she moved on to Westminster School of Art where she studied under Walter Bayes.
Predominately a painter of genre and figures, Mort did paint some coastal scenes after relocating to Cornwall in 1938. She met Eric Hiller and Charles breaker, both local artists and with them established the Newlyn Holiday Sketching Group in 1949, which became a regular Summer School over the next fifteen years. A retrospective exhibition of her work, Fifty Years of Painting, was held at Newlyn Art Gallery in 1985. She also exhibited with the Newlyn Society of Artistsand at the Falmouth Art Gallery.
Bibliography:
Marjorie Mort : Fifty years of painting, 1935-1985. Catalogue of an exhibition held at and published by the Newlyn Orion Galleries, Cornwall, 1985.
With thanks to artbiogs.co.uk